Preface:If you are a student of Dr. Karen Olsen-Bruhns of San Francisco State Univeristy, you should be aware that she has attributed to me something I have never claimed. On her web site (as of this writing in May 2003), Dr. Olsen-Bruhns states of me that "...the author claims his Truly Scientific research shows that the Manteño got to Mexico...". This is false. Such a claim does not appear on my current website, my previous website, or in three publications documenting the project (Smith 1999, Smith and Haslett 2000, Haslett and Smith 2002). Precolumbian Ecuador-West Mexico contact is a premise of the project based on multiple lines of evidence: I am investigating the sailing capacities and limitations of vessels described in early historical documents, and I have never claimed that our voyages show that the Manteño reached West Mexico. I discuss this issue further below after summarizing the archaeological evidence for West Mexico-Ecuador contact in the precolumbian era. Dr. Olsen-Bruhns is free to argue the evidence regarding this proposed contact, but she has shown poor judgement and poor scholarship in attributing to me a claim I have never made; in fact, as I show below, she has attributed to me her own flawed line of reasoning, which is particularly irresponsible. CMS, May 2003, updated 29 April 2006.

Long-distance population contact in prehistory must be indicated by multiple, independent lines of evidence rather than isolated similarities of artifact style or function. To guard against the possibility of misinterpreting parallel but unrelated developments, such lines of evidence (e.g. artifact styles) must be found chronologically antecedent in the suspected 'donor' region, and should appear suddenly, without a period of 'startup', in the 'recipient' region. To guard against diffusion of an idea or style, that idea or style should not appear in regions intervening between the 'donor' and the 'recipient'. Social and technical mechanisms for carrying out the contact should also be identified.

Multiple, Independent Lines of Evidence

These requirements are largely met in data indicating precolumbian contact between regions that are today Ecuador and West Mexico. These data include:

• similarities in clothing styles and manufactuing techniques (Anawalt 1992),
  
• similarities in mortuary architecture and practices (Kan et al. 1989),
  
• similarities in language (Swadesh 1967),
  
• precise matches in metallurgical techniques and artifact design (Hosler 1988),
  
• the facts that the Tarascans of West Mexico (a) referred to themselves as "Purepecha" ("latecomers" or "recent arrivals"), (b) told the Spanish that their origins were in the South, and that they arrived by sea, and (c) have linguistic affinities not with the peoples of Mexico, but with South American peoples (Malmstron 1995).

The metallurgical data are particularly convincing. Hosler has shown that the techniques of metal artifact production in Ecuador and West Mexico are so similar as to preclude independent invention, and she concludes that metallurgy was introduced to West Mexico from West Ecuador around 800AD (Hosler 1988: see also Hosler, Lechtman and Holm 1990). This introduction would be by by sea, as such techniques and styles are absent in the intervening countries of Central America, and seafaring is known to have been an important element of Ecuadorean (but not West Mexican) prehistory (see Currie 1995, Murra 1991, and further comments below).

Independent lines of faunal and botanical evidence support this proposed contact:

• the painted jay (Cyano corax dickeyi) of West Mexico is the species most closely related to the Ecuadorean white-tailed jay (Cyanocorax mystacalis), which does not occur in Central America, sugesting human introduction (Haemig 1979),
  
• the West Mexican hairless dog probably originated in Peru, and human introduction of the dog to West Mexico is implied in several ways (Cordy-Collins 1994),
  
• several species of vegetatively-propogating precolumbian plants occur only in West Mexico and South America, leading Dr. R. Bye (Curator of the Botanical Museum of Mexico City) to conclude that that they were introduced to Mexico by seacraft from South America, as they do not survive well as seeds and must be planted as shoots, a line of evidence now being investigated (Bye personal communication 2003).

Archaeologists have long noted similarities between precontact Ecuador and West Mexico which are more easily explained by contact than by parallel, unrelated developments: as early as 1960, Coe was convinced of this contact and remarked that the artifact similarities:

"between La Victoria [a site in Guatemala] and the Formative phases of the Guayas Basin and south coast of Ecuador are too close for the traits to havepassed through an overland series of filters. The only explanation for such identities must be actual maritime contact between the peoples of these two areas, most certainly in the form of trading ships." (Coe 1960:384).

In 1978, Frank Salomon wrote:

"Newly discovered ethnohistorical sources from the northern Andes suggest that the affinity between Mesoamerican and ecuatorial civilizations of the late prehispanic times was broader and deeper than commonly supposed...they add to the well known and compelling evidence for ties between the Mexican and Ecuadorean Pacific Littorals..." (Salomon 1977-1978:231)

The absence of the above-mentioned traits between West Mexico and Ecuador strongly suggests that a maritime route was used to carry out this 'point-to-point' contact. Such a route was first seriously discussed in the late 1950's and early 1960's (Borhegyi 1959, Coe 1960, West 1961). A one-way journey, rather closely following the coast, between Ecuador and West Mexico is a voyage of roughly 2,500km (over 1,800 miles). Such a voyage would require substantial vessels and maritime knowledge; the social and technical means of contact.

Social Mechanisms of Contact

At contact (AD 1526), guilds of Ecuadorean traders known as mindala orchestrated a complex and far-ranging trade network (Solomon 1977-1978, 1987) in much the same way as the pochteca of Mexico and similar goups in Peru (Ramirez 1986, Rostoworowski 1977). The antiquity of such guilds is unknown, but it is clear that organized maritime trade was long a structuring variable of social evolution and economy in precolumbian coastal Ecuador (Stothert 1993), conceivably occuring by 2500BC (Zeidler 1991). By the time of the Ecuadorean Regional Integration Period (AD 800-1530), this trade was apparently monopolised by the Manteño culture of the Manabi province of Western Ecuador, and likely including the Huancavilca culture complex immediately to the South of the Manteño area (Currie 1995, Marcos 1995, Norton 1986). Such monopoly of marine traffic and control of certain ritually-important trade items obtained from the ocean (e.g. shell, see Cordy-Collins 1990 and Zeidler 1991) are considered to have assisted the Manteño in resisting assimilation by the Inka (Zeidler op cit:252), indicating a comprehensive, organized and viable trade system.

Technical Mechanisms of Contact

At contact the people of coastal Ecuador also possessed the technical means for making this contact. This is the well-known Ecuadorean sailing raft (for a comprehensive analysis see Edwards 1965), a vessel that Marcos suggests was developed as part of the coastal Ecuadorean specialization in long-distance trade (Marcos 1995). The absence of large, aboriginal sailing craft North of Ecuador, and the long record of historic accounts of native sailing craft operating from Ecuador (beginning with the Spanish interception of a large native sailing raft off Ecuador in 1526: Szadszi 1979) both suggest that the above-mentioned contact was initiated by Ecuadorean mariners headed North, rather than West Mexican mariners headed South.

The antiquity of sailing vessels in South America has yet to be established, but several reviews of the archaeological and historical data (Edwards 1965) have concluded that sailing was an aboriginal development, and not a result of the sail concept being diffused from early European explorers' arrival in the Carribbean in 1492 (e.g. Lothrop 1932:235). That hypothesis would have to explain why the people of lower Mexico, Central America and Northern Pacific South America (ostensibly those transmitting the sailing concept in 34 years from 1492 to the Ruiz encounter in 1526), did not adopt the sail, which is a rather useful invention, even on a canoe. It would also have to explain why natives of Ecuador did not fit sails to open-hulled vessels, but applied them to log rafts steered with guares, a configuration completely unknown in Europe; open-hulled vessels (canoes) steered with paddles were also used by natives of Ecuador, so they were not ignorant of the principle. The sail-diffusion hypothesis would also have to explain a remarkably rapid adaptation of the sail for use in offshore sailing originating from Ecuador (as encuntered by Ruiz in 1526) with all the expertise in specialized forms of knowledge required for such voyaging. An independent development of the sail (in the same way there was independent development of similarly complex technologies of pottery, weaving, and so on) in precolumbian South America is the simpler hypothesis.

Precolumbian South American vessels equipped with what appear to be masts and sails are illustrated in several artifacts and textiles (Cordy-Collins 1990). These are not conclusive, but are being investigated at this time. Another of our lines of research is the development of archaeological models for the signature of a sailing raft which may be found in the field; such a signature might also be detected for sailing raft trade and/or refitting ports, a research avenue anticipated by South American archaeologists (Coe 1960: 385, Murra 1991:77). At present our expedition accepts as a premise the aboriginal invention of the sail, as it was independently invented in many populations worldwide.

Competing Hypotheses: Independent Development and Contact

Several independent lines of archaeological, faunal and floral evidence have been advanced which suggest precolumbian contact between Ecuador and West Mexico. These lines of evidence include cultural and biological phenomena which are not encountered in the intervening 2,400km of Central America, precluding diffusion. Two competing hypotheses can account for these data: independent development, or point-to-point contact between West Mexico and Ecuador.

The independent development hypothesis requires multiple explanations for similar or exact trajectories of development in a variety of variables, as noted above:

• language,
  
• the manufacture and design of clothing, pottery, artifacts,
  
• burial practices,
  
• one avian species (Painted Jay),
  
• one mammal species (West Mexican Hairless dog),

Such parallelism seems unlikely among so many diverse, independent lines of evidence.

The contact hypothesis is far simpler, has been suspected by many archaeologists for decades, and can account for the data by the introduction of the the cultural and biological exotics to West Mexico from Ecuador in either short-term (e.g. opportunistic) or long-term (e.g. planned) contact models. This hypothesis is supported by the presence of viable social and technical mechanisms for long-distance contact in the proposed 'donor' region, Ecuador, where the early-contact historical record identifies both organized guilds of long-distance traders and the sailing raft and its associated seafaring expertise.

The contact hypothesis is accepted as a premise for the Manteño Expedition, which focuses on the technical means of contact, the sailing raft; how it is built, at what material and labour costs; how it handles, in coastal piloting and blue-water passages; its capacities and limitations, and so on. The expedition is not intended to 'prove' this contact by making the voyage from Ecuador to West Mexico on a replica vessel. Such a voyage today would not, of course, prove that the voyage was undertaken in the past (in the same way, failing to make the voyage in modern times would not prove that it was not undertaken in the past: see further comments below).

Taking Back the Sailing Raft and the Need for Experimental Archaeology

The Manteño Expedition (1998-1999) had the objective of exploring the options and constraints which would have conditioned the behaviour of these hypothesized precolumbian mariners by building a replica of one of their vessels, and sailing this route (Smith 1999). Ours is the only investigation and expedition using accurate replicas of the large sailing vessels of coastal Ecuador in (a) the manner (coastal piloting) and (b) the waters (the Eastern Pacific littoral) for which they were designed. Thor Heyerdahl and many imitators used replica vessels to drift (not sail) downwind towards Polynesia from Peru; we sail North, coastally, from Ecuador towards West Mexico. Clearly, our expedition has completely different aims, as stated above.

In a way, this expedition and project is meant to 'take back' the sailing raft, from the Heyerdahl legacy. Today, the mention of the phrase 'balsa raft', particularly in some archaeological circles, is often equated with Heyerdahl and his activities. I, as a professional archaeologist, want the raft back: I want to bring the Manteño mariners and their activities to clarity from obscurity.

In the same way that we learn about ancient pottery production by interviewing modern potters, and making our own pottery (essentially, conducting experiments) this project is 'experimental archaeology'. It is meant to generate archaeologically-relevant information on Manteño sailing vessels by building and sailing them with the analytical integrity outlined by Coates et al (1995). The project is not meant to prove that Ecuadoreans sailed to West Mexico: that is indicated by the evidence mentioned above, and is accepted by most archaeologists working in these regions. And, of course, if we succeed in sailing to West Mexico on a sailing raft, that would not prove that that was done in prehistory (nor would failure to do so prove that it was not done).

A recent critiqe by Dr. Karen Olsen-Bruhns of San Francisco State University takes the following line of argument: 'the expedition failed to reach anwhere past Panama, therefore the Manteño failed to reach anywhere past Panama'. This reasoning is flawed in that it suggests that if you fail to do something today (with the same technology used in the past), then it could not have been done in the past. This irrational line of reasoning is of the same argumentative form that would state 'if you succeed in doing something today (with the same technology used in the past), then it must have been done in the past.'. Dr. Olsen-Bruhns did not read (or ignored) the objectives of our project, which are clear in three publications (Smith 1999, Smith and Haslett 2000, Haslett and Smith 2002). Dr. Olsen-Bruhns' comment is (a) based on an inadequate reading of the primary material and (b) irrational. It may therefore be discarded.

Such critiques also ignore the learning curve: we intend to continue learning about these vessels and their handling, rather than give up with the incorrect sentiment that an experiment can 'fail'. No experiment is a failure if something has been learned which may be used in future experiments (Hempel 1966). In the experiments so far, we have learned far more about the construction, sailing characteristics, abilities and limitations of these vessels than could ever be done by a theory alone. In understanding ancient technologies there is little or no reasonable substitute for experimentation with replicas, which are essentially theoretical models in three dimensions (Harding 1999, Zubrow 1981). In archaeology, the current rather comprehensive understanding of stone tools, perhaps the most ubiquitous trace of hominid activity over the past three million years, has come only with a fifty-year period of intense experimentation, much of it focusing on replicating ancient stone tool types, and using them. If you want to understand a Mousterian point in any useful manner, you make a replica, and you use it (see Shea 1990). Computer simulations of sailing voyages are fascinating and can be productive (e.g. Callaghan 2003), but the best way to understand ancient activity remains to make and use copies of ancient artifacts.

Thus, we (John Haslett and I, and our crew) will continue to build and sail these vessels, to learn about, as mentioned, the constraints and options which would have conditioned the behaviour of ancient Ecuadorean mariners. We have recently had a very productive meeting in Los Angeles, CA, where we outlined a 6-year plan to investigate the sailing raft from first principles. A core concept in this project will be to 'get the raft back'.

This website is being reworked, partly to incorporate new information and plans for the six-year research project being planned.

Cameron M. Smith
Laboratory of Archaeology
Department of Anthropology
Portland State University
Portland, Oregon 97201

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